It shows the high school girls basketball teams from Pike and Ben Davis interrupting their game Saturday night to brawl, first one player from each team squaring off and then a few more rushing in and then … well, then it’s hard to see what happened next. What I can tell you is that I have seen what the IHSAA has seen. Couldn’t fairly write this story without knowing what it knows, right? So I asked IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox to let me see what he saw.

There are kids on both teams who don’t deserve to play high school basketball again. Not this season, not next season, not ever. A hard line should be taken on teenage athletes who punch each other and stomp on each other and have to be physically dragged away from the fray. No second chance at high school basketball for a kid like that.

The IHSAA had the chance to take that hard line but didn’t.

The IHSAA took a line that was harder in some ways, softer in others – and too easy, above all else.

The IHSAA decided they were all guilty – equally guilty, from the Pike kid who stomped on a Ben Davis player to the Ben Davis player throwing punches to the Ben Davis players pulling teammates away from the brawl to the Pike player who saw what was happening and calmly retreated to the safety of her bench, where she stayed out of trouble … only to find out Monday that she will pay the same price as everyone else on the court that night.

Most of you haven’t seen what the IHSAA has seen, one video shot from court level by a fan and forwarded to Ben Davis and then to the IHSAA, and the game video shot by each team from several rows up in the bleachers. Here’s what each video shows: The entire incident lasted about 40 seconds. There’s a flurry of havoc, four or six or maybe more players – it’s so hard to tell in real time – in a scrum of punching, kicking and tackling.

Then everyone is on the court, players and coaches and parents. Most of them are milling about, pulling kids off each other. Some of them, too many of them – two would be too many – are fighting.

A security guard is on the court. He leaves it bleeding from above one eye.

What happened was scary and wrong, but which kids exactly were wrong? I asked various IHSAA officials why the organization didn’t study the videos to identify which kids were triggering or escalating the violence, and which were trying to end it. Each school could help identify the problem-makers and the peace-keepers.

“We really didn’t go down that path of saying: ‘OK, number so-and-so threw four punches, and number so-and-so threw three, and so-and-so had four kicks and the other one had a tackle,’” Cox said. “We didn’t go down that path, and the schools didn't ask that. We went down the path that benches erupted, in violation of our rules. Both coaches … attempted to control their kids. They called timeouts, they talked to their kids. The officials, they tried to keep this thing under control. Two double fouls and three technical fouls were called before the fight ever erupted. But it didn’t work. That’s where we focused our attention, that we had individuals attempting what they were supposed to do. And quite honestly it didn’t work.”

But what about the kids who didn’t throw any punches?

“There’s the young lady from Pike,” Cox said of Tyana Robinson. “I saw the article, and she made a really good decision. She made a great decision. Fact of the matter is, she’s the only one. We have a rule, and it’s very clear: If you leave the bench, you’re automatically ejected. There was nobody on the bench. Except maybe that one girl.”

Automatic ejection is one thing. Cancellation of a season is much more. I tell Cox the NBA also has a rule about leaving the bench: automatic one-game suspension, even for the peace-keepers. NBA players are adults. Here in Indiana, some high school kids – less equipped to handle these situations than professional athletes – left the bench, and they lost their season.

Here’s what Cox said:

“They’re all there on the floor grabbing people,” he said. “I can’t tell you if No. 35 on the bench in sweats – we didn’t go through and count the number of punches and tackles and kicks. They left the bench, and they’re suspended.

“And I’ll speak to the NBA. We are not the NBA. Thank God we’re not the NBA. Maybe if we teach these kids with harsh penalties and harsh lessons, if they’re lucky enough to get to play college basketball and professional basketball … they’ll learn some lessons that will carry forward for them and this won’t be an issue when they do become adults.”

Some will say the IHSAA went where it needed to go, others that it went too far. Given the noble nature of an organization that is committed to the athletic opportunities of high school kids, but the erratic nature with which it sometimes makes decisions, there is room here to believe what you want. Especially if you’ve seen nothing of the incident but the vaporous imagery available online, imagery that must be supplemented by your own imagination, personal politics and preconceived notions.

Sometimes the IHSAA overreaches. It deals with teenagers, kids still learning how the world works, and it rules with a fist made of iron – crushing the guilty to scare off future misbehavior. The IHSAA did that last season when the boys teams of Hammond and Griffith brawled. The IHSAA canceled their seasons. The court system intervened. Griffith, given the gloriousness of a second chance, reached the state final and got there with class and grace.

On the surface, the iron fist wielded by IHSAA speaks to most of us. It fills our dual need for vengeance and easy solutions: This can’t happen – off with their heads. All their heads.

Below the surface, where important decisions like this ought to be considered and then made with a scalpel, not an iron fist, the truth is murkier. There is gray here, not merely black and white. In a story like the Pike-Ben Davis game from Saturday night, it’s so hard to know what punishment every single player deserves. But I know this: